I just stumbled on Link TV

Its sort of like discovering that Dubai owns Vegas.

Running on Murdoch owned Direct TV today there is a continual progression of informative programs; "Propaganda", "Orwell Rolls in his Grave", "The Innocent", "The Planet", "Blackwater: Army for Hire", "Politics of War", Burning the Future"-Coal in America", Amy Goodman Speaking Out for Justice" and "Democracy Now" I never realized were there.

As I sit here they are advertising "GITMO" for Thursday, and a program on the South American Police called "Blood and Land" scheduled for Friday

Where the hell have I been?

Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida has been doing to me what I ought to be doing to him; filling my mailbox with calls for action regarding the efforts of the Bush administration to diminish the powers of Congress in favor of the powers of the Executive branch and demanding support for impeachment.

Federalists, the representatives of the haves and have mores, the Congressional lawyers of the corporations, have been working to diminish the powers of the Congress in favor of the Executive and Judicial Branches since 1798, but never before have they so blatently sought to give Congress a coup de gras. They now recognize that after a couple centuries of this brainwashing we have lost our ability to be outraged and devolved from revolutionaries into consumers.  

Tonight there is a total eclipse of the Moon starting 10:01 PM eastern standard time. The partial eclipse begins just after the polls close.

I'm not sure that its going to signify the end of mass media controlled corporate politics in America and the beginning of a new involvement for people who never felt they had any role in the decision making process, but its certainly a clear and starry night in which it may be worthwhile to step outside the smoke filled rooms for a breath of fresh air.

The Bush administration has attempted to set precedents that strip from the Congress all its powers and transfer them to the President. Through signing statements, executive orders and other attempts to assert that if the president does it then its legal, the Executive Branch has managed to create confusion as to who is responsible for the decision making process in this country.

It may be that in the planning stages where the Federalist Society worked out the details, it was assumed future presidents would naturally be of a Republican or Federalist orientation and simply keep their expanded powers, gradually reducing the power of the people to govern themselves through their representatives in Congress.

Recently things have changed. We now no longer have Republican control of all three branches. We no longer have the threat of a conservative and hawkish Clinton whitehouse matched with a Republican or Blue Dog Congress. Our leadership may no longer be desirous of joining in a decision making procress favoring the unitary executive over Congress. Barak Obama and a we rather than I perspective may indeed bring change of the most basic order.

Its a rainy day. I'm sitting in a house with no furniture, just a table with a computer on it and a chair waiting for the sun to return before I commit to taking the last truckload down east.

My wife doesn't want to take the sailboat, the refridgerator or the couch cause they are heavy. I'm hoping Al Gore will appear clutching a shiny nobel prize, the clouds will go away and all the heavy burdens will break down into pieces I can manage one sail at a time.

I just put a new metal roof on the barn. It occured to me that I could order it covered with a laminate that allows it to function as a photovoltaic collector and run my meter backward, I decided not to, because I couldn't afford either the time or the money to do it right.

Though I know I can't afford not to eventually, I don't believe its gonna be twenty years from now, when the warranty on the roof runs out, before my son inherits the energy problem.

What really bothers me is I know that if I let money influence my choices I have to expect others are likely to go the same route. I know that if I expect that what will make solar affordable and alternative energy feasible is more people using it, then I have some responsibility to walk the talk.

What follows is the illogic I was left with.

Is the rate of increase increasing at an increasing rate?

I'm watching Bill Myers Joural with Bruce Fein and John Nichols of the Nation discussing the impeachment of Bush and Cheney and explaining why its necessary in much the same terms we would use.

Why? Because it has occured to the hard right Fein represents that the precedent Bush and Cheney have set for contemptuous dismissal of Congress and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the rule of law is almost certainly going to be placed in the hands of a Democrat in 2008.

Nichols agrees and expands upon what Fein has said by pointing out that the American people are the real decision maker and they are not happy with the way things are going. If there is no penalty then we have reinforced this behavior and the precedent will hold in the future.

Would a Democrat desire to use warrantless surveillence against Big Oil, Halliburton, the Military Industrial Complex, unscrupulous developers despoiling the environment or the people left over in government and its intelligence agencies that want to continue the erosion of civil liberties; kidnapping, torture, murder and holding without rendition?

Antonin Scalia has already made up his mind about the Guantanamo detainees, why bother to let their case be heard? He's been going on about the issues which became the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act for Years.

When the Supreme Court comes to Congress and says it needs a pay raise to attract higher quality people as clerks... aside from the issue of encouraging the hiring of judges whose decisions are motivated by money, one has to wonder how a pay raise affects the selection of the justices themselves which is really the heart of the problem.

The flurry of recent decisions raise the question if destroying everything America stands for constitutes the sort of behavior we expect SCOTUS to engage in. When we talk about Impeachment lets remember that SCOTUS justices can be removed for their behavior on the bench and let Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy know what you think when they go abroad to teach this summer.

Scooters Sentence commuted.
Yeah but he still has to pay his $250,000 fine

Scooters Sentence commuted?
Yeah, but he loses his law license

Scooters Sentence commuted!
What if Scooter breaks parole ???

Who's gonna pardon Bush?

Having just read through 700 some odd pages of secrets that have been out there for half a century but considered original research as Wikipedia would put it, I am most troubled not by the use of mob hitmen to go after Castro, or operation Phoenix, or the warrentless surveillence of overseas communications, or the holding without rendition of suspects without a trial, but by this found on page 416, buried in among the Watergate documents which documents the experimental testing on human volunteers (special forces troops) of drugs rejected because of unfavorable side effects.

What happened to all those hearings, investigations, summons, bills and dramatic demonstrations of power we were expecting? Impeachment turns out to be like a mustard burp. Momentarily tangy then lost in the air.

How did this                                                Become this?

When it comes to rolling over for Bush, this Congress has that playing dead routine topped.

After watching 86 some odd episodes to get to this point I was hoping for some closure. Its sort of like waiting for Bush to get impeached and the war to end and everything to go back to the way it used to be, bad as that was.

Bottom Line I keep wishing for more Gore.

What we are and what we think we are is entering a "don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters", subterranean homesick blues, level of cognitive dissonance.

America has reached a position wherein we now recognize there are costs to a society which is perpetually unable to move forward or make any progress against all the hot air blowing out of Washington.

To understand how did we get here, to recognize the kind of a jam we are in, we need to choose another tack, to question some of the things we, the people of the planet Earth have taken for granted for the last four millenia, not the least of which would be the need for leaders to cut the deals before global warming leaves us with the Sea People taking over from the Land Folk.

The Constitution has been the heart of the Republic that life and limb are sacrificed to protect for more than two centuries. It represents the attitudes and values that shape the consensus of the United States and make us a nation rather than a loosly organized rabble of different factions.

It has kept us choosing freedom and liberty over the safety of cowardice and tyranny even when that meant the most extreme kinds of sacrifice. We weep for all those sacrifices of its defenders down through the years. We honor their commitment and we rejoice in their success.

When we remember it and stand by it we are strengthened, when our apathy and carelessness leave its memory in peril we cross over to the other side of the mirror to see it become part of the brush Bush is clearing away.

Sometimes we all act like we just don't get it. We expect our Congress Critters to represent us; their actions to reflect our actions.

We wonder what was so bad about giving Bush the funding in a form that forced him to veto it? We figured that just made him look stubborn end appropriately less powerful. Adding the benchmarks and the emergency founding for programs Democrats see as more urgent than building more nuclear attack subs made perfectly good sense.

Once he vetoed it they could easily have said:

"No? You don't want the money to support the troops? You can't get the job done? Given how bad things are going we can understand it if you don't want to be Commander in Chief anymore; just bring our troops home and we'll move on to other urgent business doing something about alternative energy, global warming and all the other issues you have neglected.

There is something else going on over there...

to end the war and to do something sensible with healthcare. It was worth the drive out to Amherst and back to see the fight over whether to Impeach Cheney first and then Bush or to Impeach them both together. Everybody wanted to Impeach somebody and then go on to indictments and war crimes trials, but being Democrats it took awhile to agree on the terms of the resolution.

I don't know how many states are now resolved to instruct their politicians to get in line behind Kucinich but the momentum for Impeachment is definitely growing

These are just my personal Impressions  but there is more below the fold

How should the Congress react to the President telling it what to do?
Is it Bush or the special interests behind him using the Courts and their
precedents to take control of the government away from we the people?

Constitutionally Congress comes first. Article I Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

That would seem to mean that Congress legislates, while the President and the Supreme Court are governed by the legislation passed by Congress.

Article I, Section 8 gives Congress certain enumerated powers to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Both the President and the Supreme Court are obligated to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Their opinions are not laws. Laws come from the Congress.

more below the fold...